Page 112 - the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer

hoping that Joe would not forget him.
But it transpired that this was a request which Joe had
just been going to make of Tom, and had come to hunt
him up for that purpose. His mother had whipped him for
drinking some cream which he had never tasted and knew
nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him and
wished him to go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for
him to do but succumb; he hoped she would be happy, and
never regret having driven her poor boy out into the unfeel-
ing world to suffer and die.
As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a
new compact to stand by each other and be brothers and
never separate till death relieved them of their troubles.
Then they began to lay their plans. Joe was for being a her-
mit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and dying, some
time, of cold and want and grief; but after listening to Tom,
he conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages
about a life of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate.
Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where the
Mississippi River was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a
long, narrow, wooded island, with a shallow bar at the head
of it, and this offered well as a rendezvous. It was not inhab-
ited; it lay far over toward the further shore, abreast a dense
and almost wholly unpeopled forest. So Jackson’s Island
was chosen. Who were to be the subjects of their piracies
was a matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunt-
ed up Huckleberry Finn, and he joined them promptly, for
all careers were one to him; he was indifferent. They pres-
ently separated to meet at a lonely spot on the river-bank

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